advanced butterfly

Chris Corrigan chris at chriscorrigan.com
Fri Aug 25 11:02:23 PDT 2006


On 8/23/06, Justin T. Sampson <justin at krasama.com> wrote:
>
>
> What happens in the presence of dominance relationships, such as a
> boss in a work setting? I'm thinking in particular of one work
> experience, which I left recently (hmm, Law of Two Feet). The CEO
> of the company held quarterly company meetings that she called
> "design sessions"; I really liked the idea at first, but they were
> so strictly structured that not much interesting happened. When
> something interesting DID happen -- some of us actually talking
> about real issues and opportunities for improving the work of the
> company, and straying somewhat from the set agenda -- she got
> furious! I just totally shut down at that point and didn't talk
> any more after that. This was NOT an Open Space of course; but
> what I'm wondering is, if we were to hold an Open Space in such a
> situation, would the facilitator perform any kind of intervention
> with such a person?
>

You know, what really matters is what you might be expecting an Open Space
event to do in this case.  For one thing, it doesn't sound like there was
much space open in the environment, but even this isn't necessarily a
problem, one just has to be clear about what the meeting is really about.
If I was working with your team, I might have suggested that the real
conversations we needed to have were not about design but about working
together, and we could have had a rich time if we opened space on that
question.

But more importantly, I think it's worth noting that in your example the
space clearly WAS open in a much bigger way, and you chose to leave.  That's
why Harrison once wrote that the good news is that Open Space works and the
bad news is also that it works.

And in either case, nothing any facilitator could do would make for a better
result.  If, in an Open Space event, someone is wanting to "take control",
people generally leave.  If they don;t physically leave (because maybe they
are scared) they certainly mentally leave.  Either way, the controlling, or
dominant person rarely gets the quality of result they were expecting.
Without invitation at the heart of these communication practices, no amount
of intervention will save the day, and so from the facilitator's
perspective, it's best not to pretend to make things better, but rather to
hold space for what is real.  Perhaps then, the REAL conversations will
emerge.

Chris


-- 
CHRIS CORRIGAN
Consultation - Facilitation
Open Space Technology

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